McCain censured by Maricopa County GOP for voting record, attacks on conservatives

posted at 2:41 pm on January 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Worth mentioning, especially as Maverick prepares to either run for another term in the Senate or retire. The action by the Maricopa County GOP in censuring John McCain was designed to convince him to choose the latter, but how realistic is that? Matthew Boyle reports on the resolution adopted with “sadness and humility”:

“As leaders in the Republican Party, we are obligated to fully support our Party, platform, and its candidates,” the formal censure resolution reads. “Only in times of great crisis or betrayal is it necessary to publicly censure our leaders. Today we are faced with both. For too long we have waited, hoping Senator McCain would return to our Party’s values on his own. That has not happened.”

The resolution continues by stating, with “sadness and humility,” the Republicans in the county “rise and declare” that McCain “has amassed a long and terrible record of drafting, co- sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats, such as Amnesty, funding for ObamaCare, the debt ceiling, assaults on the Constitution and 2nd amendment, and has continued to support liberal nominees.”

That voting record from McCain, they say, “has been disastrous and harmful to Arizona and the United States.”

McCain was elected, the Republicans say in the censure resolution, by campaigning “as a conservative” and making promises during his various reelection campaigns “such as the needed and welcomed promise to secure our borders and finish the border fence, only to quickly flip-flop on those promises.”

The Republicans say that McCain “has abandoned our core values and has been eerily silent against Liberals, yet publicly reprimands Conservatives in his own Party.” Therefore, the Maricopa County GOP leadership “censures Senator McCain for his continued disservice to our State and Nation.”

The censure states that formally, “until he consistently champions our Party’s Platform and values, we, the Republican leadership in Arizona will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. Senator.”

Not to toss a lot of cold water on this effort, but …. just how does McCain’s track record on these points differ substantially from 2010, when he ran and won his fifth term in office? By that time, McCain had fronted the GOP effort to partner with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform for four years, and at least played footsie with the notion of joining his friend John Kerry as his running mate in the 2004 election. McCain has been re-elected twice since that widely-reported and less-than-energetically denied phase of his career, from which he bounced back to win the 2008 presidential nomination.

Maricopa County includes metropolitan Phoenix, the most populous part of the state (and where I lived briefly during McCain’s first term in the Senate), but Maricopa isn’t Arizona in toto. Arizonans tend to be fiscal conservatives and more libertarian on other points, strong on defense, and thanks to a growing Hispanic population, less hard-line on immigration than one might think (clearly, considering McCain’s success there). Like much of the interior West, they tend to like people who can’t be pigeonholed into one set category, preferring individualism over lock-step conformity. Even after all of McCain’s heterodoxy on immigration and his loss in the 2008 election, he won his 2010 Senate race by 25 points, and won all but two counties — including a 29-point win in Maricopa County.

His potshots at Ted Cruz and Rand Paul won’t help in 2016, but then again, they probably won’t hurt as much as the activists hope there, either. He’ll find a way to find common cause with the Tea Party between then and now, probably on spending issues, and mitigate any intraparty challenges, unless he decides not to run at all. However, given McCain’s personality, these kinds of censures might just convince him to go one more round just for satisfaction’s sake.

Besides, don’t we want him around until Katie Pavlich can unseat him in 2022?

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The ruling elite are without Party. They pretend to be “on the other side of the isle”, but they meet behind closed doors and plan the demise of the country with impunity.

McCain is a disgrace to the constitution and certainly to the Republican Party. He’s been screwing this nation on the tails of his war record for decades.

I’m glad Obama beat him. At least Obama is a card carrying progressive/communist. He doesn’t pretend to be anything else except maybe a Christian. McCain would have stained the conservative brand for decades had he won.

Not to toss a lot of cold water on this effort, but …. just how does McCain’s track record on these points differ substantially from 2010, when he ran and won his fifth term in office? By that time, McCain had fronted the GOP effort to partner with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform for four years, and at least played footsie with the notion of joining his friend John Kerry as his running mate in the 2004 election. McCain has been re-elected twice since that widely-reported and less-than-energetically denied phase of his career, from which he bounced back to win the 2008 presidential nomination.

McCain’s win in 2010 has a huge asterisk beside it. First of all, he was less than 2 years removed from being the GOP nominee for President. It was gonna be tough to unseat him under those circumstances. Add to that the complete lack of a respectable alternative in the primary(sorry J.D. Hayworth, but you ain’t it), a crucial endorsement by Palin, and McCain actually doing a convincing job of publicly opposing Obama in the first two years of his Presidency, and he had enough cover to win reelection handily.

2016 will be a whole new ballgame. I’d be very surprised to see Palin endorse him again. McCain has destroyed any credibility he may have had left with conservatives with the renewed push for amnesty with the Gang of Eight followed by the public trashing of Cruz and Lee and actually referring to Obamacare as the law of the land on the Senate floor(think that won’t be used in political ads?). And I suspect he’ll get a real challenge this time in the primaries.

That’s not to say he won’t get reelected in 2016. But he’ll have to work for it this time. And running to the right come late 2015 won’t be a viable option, so I’ll be curious to see how he suckers the base into supporting him again.

McCain isn’t a doddering old fool! He knows exactly what he is doing and it’s all for his back pocket and ego. His war record? If the truth were known (hey Hillery let us see those FBI records) he would be drummed from office. How would being a continual back stabber somehow be a claim to some sort of statesmenship. he laughs all the way to his off shore accounts. He threw the last election against the weakest opponent and we don’t ask why? Why? John, what was in it for you or what did they have on you that made you once again into the rat you were in Hanoi

AZ does have a recall for senators it was tried against Dennis DeConcini. The problem is that it takes upwards of half-a- MILLION (legitimate) signatures on the petition to initiate the recall election. (At the time of DeConcini I believe the number was 440,000 signatures.)

If I’m not mistaken we here in Arizona have the right to recall ALL our elected officials. The constitution gives the several states that power. Stop me if I’m wrong, but don’t the states have the right to write laws. I’m just asking because that’s the impression I have.

McCain is the quintessential RINO as I use that term, which has less to do with policy positions than orientation toward his party. Like former governor Arne Carlson in my own state of Minnesota, McCain is endlessly respectful of the “esteemed members” of the opposition party, but has nothing but vitriol for “wacko birds” in his own. Clearly his passion is all on the side of attacking his fellow Republicans. Like Carlson, he’s the media’s go-to guy when they want to cause dissension among Republicans, and McCain seems to relish that role. I think it’s time for him to decide to “spend more time with his family.”

AZ does have a recall for senators it was tried against Dennis DeConcini. The problem is that it takes upwards of half-a- MILLION (legitimate) signatures on the petition to initiate the recall election. (At the time of DeConcini I believe the number was 440,000 signatures.)

sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats, such as Amnesty, funding for ObamaCare, the debt ceiling, assaults on the Constitution and 2nd amendment, and has continued to support liberal nominees.”

…and NDAA, which was a bipartisan assault on the People.

It would have better been named FPA (Fear of Pitchforks Act).

(But it surely helped our economy here in SC. Business at the gunshops is booming.)

Arizonans tend to be fiscal conservatives and more libertarian on other points, strong on defense, and thanks to a growing Hispanic population, less hard-line on immigration than one might think (clearly, considering McCain’s success there).

We take a hard line against law breakers aka illegal aliens, not immigration Ed.

Sure they would. Their state legislators are just as conservative if not more so than AZ’s. Even if this were true, It would be a small price to pay to get rid of POS like Michael Bennett, Mark Udall, John McCain, Schmuck Shumer, Barbara Boxer, Diane Fienstien etc.

2016 will be a whole new ballgame. I’d be very surprised to see Palin endorse him again. McCain has destroyed any credibility he may have had left with conservatives with the renewed push for amnesty with the Gang of Eight followed by the public trashing of Cruz and Lee and actually referring to Obamacare as the law of the land on the Senate floor(think that won’t be used in political ads?). And I suspect he’ll get a real challenge this time in the primaries.

That’s not to say he won’t get reelected in 2016. But he’ll have to work for it this time. And running to the right come late 2015 won’t be a viable option, so I’ll be curious to see how he suckers the base into supporting him again.

Although a Censure is little more than the equivalent of a rolled up newspaper swat to the nose, a mere verbal chastiseing, McCain’s Censure is well deserved.

He is given credit for being an American Hero for being held and tortured in a POW camp a long time ago. As the saying goes, “What have you done for me lately?”

McCain coveted the idea of being a ‘Maverick’, bucking the system and being willing to work both sides of the aisle to get something done. During all that time he never once took time to notice that it was him and his other RINO partners who always had to make the trip to the other side of the aisle to work those deals, that the Liberals he worked with rarely agreed to venture over to his side of the aisle or even meet him IN the aisle (middle). Basically, he has a rep as a POW about never ‘talking’, never giving anything over to the ‘enemy’…yet his nickname ‘Maverick’ was all about ‘giving it up’ to the ‘enemy’.

McCain has become a ‘ME-1st’, ‘Washington Extablishment’ RINO who is more interested about keeping his own job than remaining faithful to that oath of office he took, than working diligently as a ‘servant of the people’, and representing his Constituents / Conservatives. Instead, he joined Boehner in lambasting Conservatives & TEA Party members. He forgot he USED to wear the uniform and was part of the military brotherhood, always remaining faithful and ‘never leaving a man behind’. Instead he just sided with the enemy to F* the military, his fellow Vets, disable Americans, & the many Wounded Warriors that sacrificed when he and his fellow fat-@$$ politicians callously sent them off to war and used them as political pawns.

When his Washington Establishment buddies & his pals the Liberals needed to cut the budget to save $4.1 billion for tax credits for Illegals, fruit fly studies, & other pieces of pork designed to get them re-elected he was all too eager to join the fight to protect those things rather than defend the sacred trust this government held, the promise to take care of them if they gave their lives and bodies to service and sacrifice for this nation.

Because John McCain in 2010 ran the most conservative campaign ever. He was promising to stop illegal immigration, build a strong border and smaller government. He was so anti-amnesty in is 2010 campaign. In other words, the difference is that he was a LIAR on a very large scale.

In the 15 years I’ve been in Arizona, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a significant accomplishment that McCain has made for his constituents and his state. Never mind the fact that he has all but abandoned any pretense at fighting for conservative values.

I hope some of the HotAir regulars will actually get involved in the Republican Party as a precinct committeeman where they live. At least attend your next monthly local Party committee meeting to see how the sausage is made. You might be surprised by what you find.

Either RINOs or conservatives will be running things. And if it’s the former, it’s because not enough of the latter are willing to leave their keyboards for a couple of hours a month.